(woman speaking foreign language)
- It'd be 59.
(Pawnbroker) I give the same price to sell or to pawn.
That's good? Okay.
Okay, please put it here.
- (Rose Salane) Okay.
- All right, I hope you didn't pay too much.
How much did you pay?
- I didn't pay so, so much.
- How much do you think they're worth?
- Let's see.
This one, I wish is diamond engagement ring, but it is not.
- Okay, how much would you?
- You know, it'll bring you like $1.
This one is silver.
- Okay.
- Retail, you can get $25 if you wanna sell it.
This is metal, has no value.
(soft music)
- (Rose) I've always been drawn to objects
that reflect the everyday movements of people
throughout the city.
I remember at a young age
doing these really extensive commutes to high school
from deep Queens, going into central parts of Manhattan.
I was commuting alongside people
that were engaging in so many forms of labor.
People that were going to their respective jobs
or respective sites of work.
I wanted just to understand
the experience of living in New York.
I follow a lot of auctions throughout the city,
and one of them was the MTA's Asset Recovery.
Anything that's lost on the subway
that isn't claimed for a year
goes into this Asset Recovery auction.
So I purchased 94 rings from the MTA auction site.
I remember being taken aback
by this image of all these rings that were lost.
It almost reminded me of an overhead view of a crowd,
particularly this image of the 2003 blackout in New York.
It almost felt like these rings themselves had the power
to speak about commuters living in New York.
I'm interested in how this set of objects
reflects a large cast of people.
(soft music continues)
I think the way that I work
is that I examine the many unknowns
that surround these lost and unclaimed objects,
and then I begin considering what measurements
or methods can assess their potential value.
(soft music continues)
How do we determine something is worth something
or of some importance to a place or a person?
(machine whirring)
I was curious about taking mitochondrial DNA samples
from the rings to potentially get some information
about the biological makeup of the previous owner
or a lineage, a genetic lineage.
- (Lab Worker) So for your experiment,
we're gonna look at a region of DNA
that tends to get these mutations added up over time.
So as mom passes it down to daughter,
those mutations carry on.
- (Rose) So we'll swab some of the rings
and see if there is any mitochondrial DNA on them.
(soft music)
When you have objects that have been disengaged
in this way that's so intimate,
which is like obviously through the finger,
you don't really know what information you leave behind.
I was really wondering, how does an object
retain that information about the previous owner?
(machine whirring)
This amount of information,
which could potentially just be dirt, is from the ring.
- (Lab Worker) Yeah, that looks great.
So we need to nudge it a little.
Oh yeah, cool.
- (Rose) The one with a very faint purple but no band is the ring
meaning that there was no information that could be found.
(soft music)
What we had found through this process was that
some forms of information are just not available.
(soft music continues)
When I think about how this collection was assembled,
that all these losses were brought together
with the hope to be reclaimed,
there's a lot of humanity in that.
If science doesn't give us the full picture,
then looking at value in terms of spirituality
or speculation might give us
a different view of the life experience
of the previous owner.
So I wanted to have the rings interpreted by a psychic.
The sentimental value of objects
and the way that we cast our feelings onto things
is very much overlooked
and that's an incredibly high form of value.
- (Psychic) She was a young woman, a mother.
Spent a lot of time with her family, with her children.
- (Rose) Do you know how many children
would she have had? - Three.
- Two boys, one girl.
I don't know why, but this one,
I'm not picking up anything.
This one's a very, very special ring to someone,
and they was very sad when they lost it.
Till today, they still try looking for this ring.
One of those macho, tough guys.
Very happy person.
Lot of class, very outgoing, had a lot of hard times,
got into a lot of trouble,
and he also served time in jail.
- What is he currently doing now?
- He's kind of still up to no good.
He's not straightening out.
He wants to, he tried, but it's just the way his life is.
(soft music)
- (Rose) The ring project really led me to kind of understand
how to deal with this side of loss, but also regaining.
I've always been interested in
how an object could retell a personal history
but also the familiarity in them
that can trigger more questions and stories.
(soft music continues)
These objects are just a small soundbite
of a large chaotic city.
(coins clinking)
Now I acquired around 800 pounds of coins
that were used to pay for bus fair.
They ranged from casino tokens to religious pendants
to completely blank pieces of hardware.
To me, these coins reflect the population
and represent a lot of really big themes in society.
(coins clinking)
Usually, the objects I find are lost
so I like to recirculate this object back
into the eyes of those that are living in New York City.
(soft music continues)
I was dealing so much with these coins,
these close up moments,
seeing all of them together and zooming out,
I was like, oh my goodness.
I really created this view of the city that I inhabit.
(soft music continues)
When you look at these objects,
you see so many different people
and you so many different stories,
you see so many lives lived.
(soft music continues)